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The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued the first-ever guidelines for the management of type 2 diabetes in children and teens. Type 2 diabetes is rising rapidly among children and teens because of soaring obesity rates. It now accounts for up to 1 in 3 new cases of diabetes in those younger than 18. These guidelines are for children between the ages of 10 and 18. "Few providers have been trained in managing type 2 diabetes in children and, to date, few medications have been evaluated for safety and [effectiveness] in children," says co-author Janet Silverstein, MD, professor of pediatrics...

Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat. “It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard...

Last fall, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cut soda and other sugar- and corn-sweetened drinks from the list of “foods” that New Yorkers can buy with federal food-stamp benefits. Lobbyists, from soda makers to grocery stores to minority advocates, have fought the proposal. They say that any restriction would represent an attack both on business and on personal freedom for the poor. That argument is flimsy. As food prices rise, and as the federal government cuts back spending, the mayor’s attempt to safeguard the taxpayer dollar is fiscally and socially sound. Back...

Ryan Collins of Aldie, Va., was only 10 weeks old when doctors made the diagnosis: Type 1 diabetes. That meant up to eight insulin shots per day, a big burden on him and his family. “He couldn’t be anywhere unless there was someone around to give a shot,” said his mother, Dana Collins. “Everything had to be planned. There was no impromptu anything.” Until last month, that is, when Ryan, now almost 7, stopped needing shots. Ryan, it turns out, does not have Type 1 diabetes after all. He has a rare form of diabetes, not yet discovered when he...

Nigeria: The Story of Congressman Jefferson Vanguard (Lagos) COLUMN September 21, 2006 Posted to the web September 21, 2006 Christopher Drew "A case against politicians, a tale of friendship, ambition and betrayal". In July 2005, Vernon L. Jackson returned home to Louisville from Washington, where he had just met with Representative William J. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who had been helping to promote his fledgling digital-technology company. David Harper, a lawyer for the company, said he had never seen Mr. Jackson so demoralised. For nearly five years, the inventor and the congressman had carried the message that Mr. Jackson's company,...

ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO -- Children who get obesity-related diabetes face a much higher risk of kidney failure and death by middle age than people who develop diabetes as adults, a study suggests. The study offers some of the first strong evidence of the consequences of the nation's growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes in children, said Dr. William Knowler, a co-author and researcher with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The research also lends support to warnings that diabetes and other obesity-related ills are on the verge of shortening average life span in the United States....

The road changes just past the Starr County sign. The shoulder disappears, the grass is left uncut and the black-eyed Susans and big pink Texas sage have to compete with the orange traffic cones set out by the border patrol. Just two counties up from the Texas tip, where the flood plains along the Rio Grande change to rolling hills and eroding cliffs, Starr County, largely Mexican-American, is one of the poorest counties in the nation. Fifty-nine percent of its children live below the poverty level, and in the strange new arithmetic of want, in which poverty means not starvation...